Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to Circulation On The Run. Your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore.

In just a moment, we are going to be discussing the diagnostic conundrum of elevated high sensitivity cardiac troponin levels in a patient with renal disease, but also suspected of acute coronary syndrome. Aha! I bet I caught your attention. A very, very familiar diagnostic dilemma. So stay tuned right after these summaries.

Cardiac allograft vasculopathy is the leading cause of death in patients more than five years post cardiac transplantation. It has been hypothesized that cardiac allograft vasculopathy results from interrupted lymphatic drainage post surgery. Since the donor lymphatic vessels are not inesthimozed to that of the recipient during transplantation, thus the lymphatic system may play a crucial role in the alloimmune response.

Well, these hypothesis are addressed in the first paper in today's journal from first author Dr. Edwards, corresponding author Dr. Wong and colleagues from Kings College, London. These authors use spect CT lymphoscintigraphy in a pre-clinical model. And therefore provided objective quantification of lymphatic flow following transplantation and showed that this correlated to cardiac allograft vasculopathy. They demonstrated that cardiac lymphatic remodeling and lymphatic transport dysfunction post transplant was associated with cardiac allograft vasculopathy and transplant rejection.

They further showed that lymphatic flow was increased during chronic rejection. This in turn may have resulted in enhanced trafficking of antigen presenting cells to the local draining lymph nodes in an augmented alloimmune response. Now although the cause and effect of this phenomenon could not be fully established, these data provided the impetus for the investigation of lymphangiogenesis inhibition as a means to dampen chronic rejection.

The absorb bioresorbable vascular scaffold is known to completely resolve within three years after coronary artery implantation. However, what is the safety and effectiveness of these bioresorbable scaffolds during this critical three year period. First author Dr. Ali, corresponding author Dr. Stone and colleagues from Columbia University Medical Center performed an individual patient level meta analysis of the four randomized absorb trial and demonstrated that compared with metallic everolimus eluting stents, the bioresorbable vascular scaffold had higher rates of target lesion failure and device thrombosis cumulatively to three years and between one and three years. Multi-variable analysis identified the number of treated lesions, current tobacco use and previous cardiac interventions as independent predictors of three year target lesion failure. Whereas diabetes was predictive of three year device thrombosis in bioresorbable vascular scaffold treated patients.

The next paper reported the three year follow up of the FAME 2 trial, which compared PCI guided bi-fractional flow reserve with best medical therapy in patients with stable coronary artery disease to assess clinical outcomes and cost effectiveness. First and corresponding author Dr. Fearon and colleagues from Stanford cardiovascular institute showed that major adverse cardiac events at three years were significantly lower in the PCI group, compared with the medical treatment group. This difference was primarily as a result of a lower rate of urgent revascularization. Mean initial costs were higher in the PCI group, but by three years, were similar between the two groups. The incremental cost effectiveness ratio for PCI compared to medical therapy was more than $17,000 per quality adjusted life year at two years and $1,600 per quality adjusted life year at three years. Thus the authors concluded that percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with stable coronary artery disease and at normal fractional flow reserve may be advantages compared to with medical therapy alone, because it results in improved clinical outcomes and quality of life at no increased cost by the end of three years follow up.

The next study shows for the first time, that pioglitazone may prevent stroke as a single stand-alone outcome. Today's paper by first author Dr. Yaghi, corresponding author Dr. Kernan from Yale School of Medicine and colleagues was a secondary analysis of the iris trial, which showed that pioglitazone reduced the risk for a composite outcome of stroke on myocardial infarction among non-diabetic patients with insulin resistant and a recent stroke or transient ischemic attack. Now, the current planned secondary analysis used updated American Heart Association 2013 consensus criteria for ischemic stroke to examine the effect of pioglitazone on stroke outcomes. The study found that pioglitazone reduced the risk by 25% by five years, with absolute rates of 8% with pioglitazone versus 10.7% with placebo. Pioglitazone reduced the risk for ischemic strokes, but had no effect on the risk of hemorrhagic events. These findings add to the evidence that pioglitazone may be a potent therapy for vascular disease risk reduction and may help inform shared decision making by providers and patients for the use of pioglitazone after ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack.

Well, that ends it for our summaries. Now for a feature discussion.

The cardiac troponins have really revolutionized cardiology. We use them in of course the diagnosis of myocardial infarction and in fact the recent European Society of Cardiology recommendations say that the rapid zero and one hour triage algorithm for rule in or rule out of non STEMI should use high sensitivity troponins and interestingly irrespective of renal function. Now this latter point has caused some confusion, some questions, since we all know that patients with chronic kidney disease frequently have higher or increased levels of cardiac troponins, especially since we now can detect them with the high sensitivity essays. And this is even in the absence of an acute coronary syndrome.

Well, this week's journal contains two papers that address this topic so well. And I am delighted to have with us the corresponding author of the first paper, Dr. Christian Mueller from University Hospital Basel in Switzerland and the author of the second paper, Dr. Nicholas Mills from University of Edinburgh in Scotland. For the more, we have Dr. Torbjorn Omland, associate editor from University of Oslo in Norway.

Lot's to talk about. Christian, could I start with you? Could you say in your own words the rationale for looking at this vulnerable population and then perhaps describe what you did in your study?

Dr. Christian Mueller: I'm very thankful that Circulation shed a lot of light on the population of patients with renal dysfunction, because both as a clinician and as a researcher, I'm definitely convinced that they merit a lot of our attention for several reasons.

So first, it's important to be aware that the incidents of acute myocardial infarction among patients presenting with acute chest pain is much higher in patients with renal dysfunction, as compared to patients with normal renal function. And second, atypical clinical presentations also are more frequent in patients with renal dysfunction. Then possibly third, the ECG of course also a mandatory tool in our assessment is more often showing unspecific signs that may mimic or obscure the presence of myocardial infarctions and most of them are related to left ventricular hypertrophy. And in addition, patients with renal dysfunction are more prone to adverse events, both related to cardiovascular medication. For example, anticoagulation as well as our cardiovascular procedures, including PCI. Now again, as both papers have a strong focus on troponin, also cardiac troponin is a bit more difficult to interpret in patients with renal dysfunction related to exactly as you mentioned chronic elevations of cardiac troponin, TNI related to chronic cardiovascular disease.

And I think that's so important to stress, any troponin signal in a patient with renal dysfunction is real and should not be incorrectly attributed to just a problem of impaired secretion by the kidneys.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: So definitely an even greater need to diagnose myocardial infarction accurately in this very high risk population. So tell us what you did.

Dr. Christian Mueller: We assessed this challenging sub group within the APACE study. So APACE is a large international prospective diagnostic study that is run in five countries with 12 centers. And we actually enroll consecutive patients presenting with suspected myocardial infarction. And then all patients get a very detailed workup and then adjudicated final diagnosis. And the adjudicated file diagnosis is done by two independent cardiologists and is based on two enormous extensive sets of data. The clinical data set that has been obtained at the local site and of course includes cardiac imaging and standard troponin testing, ECG data.

In the second set of data that includes the study specific data sets, including serial measurements with high sensitivity carry troponin essay and a lot of details characterization of patients and patient follow up. So this is the reference standard against which the one hour algorithm the European Society of Cardiology evaluated. And the one hour algorithm has been derived and previously validated in overall population. Mainly patients with normal renal function. And so we tried to evaluate the performance of this predefined algorithm specifically in patients with renal dysfunctions.

So among a bit more than 3,000 patients, the prevalence of patients with renal dysfunction was 15%. So we had about 500 patients with renal dysfunction. And the interesting finding from our work is that first the prevalence of N-STEMI was nearly threefold in patients with renal dysfunction as compared to patients with normal renal function. And, fortunately the rule out part of the algorithm regarding sensitivity still works very well. It is, however, the efficacy of rule out that is lower in patients with renal dysfunction, simply because fewer patients really have very low troponin concentration and are therefore ineligible for rule out.

However, as a clinician, the main concern with troponin and renal dysfunction is the rule in part, and specificity. And as you would think, specificity of the one hour algorithm was in fact significantly lower in patients with renal dysfunction. It was still appropriate for therapeutic consequences, but it was lower as compared to patients with normal renal function, so the specificity was 89% in patients with renal dysfunction, as compared to 96.5% in normal renal function.

So the overall efficacy of the algorithm was lower in patients with renal dysfunction, however then when trying to create and derive optimized cut off levels, so all cut off levels optimized for use in renal dysfunction, we didn't really find alternative cut offs that would do a much better job than the official cut off levels recommended in the guidelines. So our conclusion is that in patients with renal dysfunction, the safety of the one hour algorithm still is very high, however the specificity of rule in and overall efficacy are decreased.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Right. That's beautifully summarized. And also that different cut offs didn't really help to increase the efficacy of this algorithm. And just to clarify to our listeners, I believe you defined renal dysfunction as an estimated GFR of less than 60, which is so beautiful because it's perfectly consistent with the second paper.

Nick, could you please tell us about your study and your take home messages as well.

Dr. Nicholas Mills: So high stakes is our clinical trial that we're conducting across hospitals in Scotland to evaluate the best way to use high levels of cardiac troponin in clinical practice. One of the areas of uncertainty is whether these assets really add any additional value for patients with chronic kidney disease, where troponin concentrations tend to be higher. And the premise of a high sensitive test is that we can measure lower concentrations and improve the sensitivity. But is this just going to create uncertainty for clinicians?

So we evaluated 5,000 consecutive patients for performance of high sensitivity cardiac to put in testing. And those with and without renal impairment. And based upon what Christian, we identified that patients with renal impairment are less likely to have very low concentrations, but that you can rule out myocardial infarction safely in patients with renal impairment. And similarly that those with renal impairment are more likely to have an abnormal troponin concentration at presentation. Around about 40% of all patients have troponins above the upper reference limit. And whilst the specificity for myocardial infarction is lower, type one myocardial infarction or myocardial infarction due to plaque rupture or cardiac thrombosis remains the most common diagnosis in this group.

Finally we looked at one year outcomes. And this is really critical. Because we found that patients with renal impairment were two to threefold more likely to die from cardiovascular disease one year following their presentation than those without renal impairment. And I think that my general experience during these tests in clinical practice is that troponin elevations in patients with kidney disease are often ignored and there's a concern about what they mean, and therefore these patients don't get access to the fantastic treatments we have for coronary heart disease. So our take home message is that high sets of troponin testing in patients with renal disease does have value, it's useful for identifying low risk patients although there are fewer of them, and it performs well as a diagnostic test, highlighting in particular a group of patients that really have poor clinical outcomes.

As a cardiological community, we need to do better.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: What I really love about both or your papers is the consistency in the messages. Torbjorn, I want to bring you in on this. You managed both papers. Such a lovely pair of papers that we're so proud to be publishing and you had also invited an editorial by Dr. deFilippi and Seliger. Would you like to comment on your perspective and perhaps the clinical take home message to our audience?

Dr. Torbjørn Omland: Yes, I think this has been pointed very well out by both Christian and Nick. And I think it's worth recapitulating that renal dysfunction is a major problem that clinicians often try to explain by just lack of renal filtration. But that the closest probably are increased production and underlying cardiac disease. So in the editorial Dr. deFilippi Filippi and Dr. Seliger points also out in these things. Moreover they try to look forward and have made comments to recent studies that showed that in patients with renal dysfunction have different troponin fragments than patients with acute myocardial infarctions.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: I find that so fascinating. And it really, really relates to the field of heart failure and what we are also talking and thinking about with natriuretic peptides and their different fragments and the possible different meanings. And how different essays maybe non specific for different fragments.

Christian, you think a lot about these things. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on this and areas of future work that are very urgent?

Dr. Christian Mueller: I think Torbjorn very nicely addressed this. So the current high sensitivity essays for T and I that we use in clinical practice, they are designed kind of to detect everything in blood that looks like troponin, either T or I, including various fragments. And I think it's a fantastic new avenue of research, trying to find out that the biochemical signatures can be further differentiated and exactly that perhaps different troponin fragments or tricordinate products more prominent in patients having ischemic injuries like treat myocardial infarction, as compared to for example other modes of injuries. So I think that's very nice hypothesis and some early data. But at least from my perspectives and to the best of my knowledge until now, the diagnostic algorithms that we have other ways to approach this in clinical practice. And so it's the higher the blood concentration in patients with acute chest pain, the more likely it's acute myocardial infarction. It's not any chronic disease and again the higher the change from presentation to one hour or two hours, the more likely it's acute as a dynamic disorder resulting in an acute increase in cardiac troponin, as compared to the chronic release patterns typically seen in patients with renal dysfunction.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yeah. That's just so fascinating. Nick, we sadly are running out of time, but I do want to give you the last word. The clinical take home message, once again. What do you think listeners should take home that may change their practice, after listening to this podcast?

Dr. Nicholas Mills: I think the key message for clinicians, is that in a patient with suspected acute coronary syndrome and has renal impairment and elevated troponin concentration, serial testing is mandatory to differentiate between those that have chronic myocardial injury due to subclinical heart disease and those that are having acute myocardial injury as a consequence of a presumed acute coronary syndrome. Field testing is critical to inform which treatment path and what investigations we recommend for our patients.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wonderful. And to take any elevations seriously, because this is a high risk population.

Well, audience you heard it right here on Circulation On The Run. I'm sure you've enjoyed this. I certainly have. Don't forget to tune in again next week.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Hello from the American Heart Association meeting in Anaheim. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from Circulation at National Heart Centre in Duke National University of Singapore and I'm so pleased to be here with the Circulation team led by editor in chief Dr. Joe Hill, as well as with Dr. Laura Mauri, senior editor from Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Dr. Dharam Kumbhani, associate editor from UT Southwestern. Boy, we've got lots to discuss. I mean, I want to just first start with congratulating you, Joe. We have got quite a number of simultaneous publications here at the AHA.

Dr. Joseph Hill: I appreciate that, Carolyn. Don't congratulate me. We have a team that is a privilege to work with. One of the initiatives that we launched right from the start was a desire to foster and shine a bright light on emerging science at the major meetings around the world. Often, that involves simultaneous publication.

I'm proud to say that we have 11 simultaneous publications, a record for us here at AHA. Most of them are clinical trials. A few are clinical science, and two of them are young investigators who are competing in the various different competitions. We reached out to them a few weeks ago and offered them the opportunity to submit to us, of course with no guarantees, and our standard remains the same, but we promised that we would provide them with an external peer review. Two of them made it through the process and they will be simultaneously published with their presentations here in Anaheim.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow, well you heard it. A record 11 simultaneous publications. We've got a lot to talk about. Let me just maybe group the topics a little bit. Let's start with talking about peripheral artery disease. I think there are at least three papers around that area, and then we'll talk about coronary artery disease, and almost focusing more on implementation science, papers, there are two there, and then of course we have to talk about heart failure. Dharam, could you start? Tell us about the FOURIER PAD trial.

Dr. Dharam Kumbhani: Yeah. It's very exciting to have clinical trials in the PAD realm. FOURIER PAD is certainly really well done sub-study of the FOURIER trial. As you remember, this was a landmark trial, which compared a PCSK9 inhibitor Evolocumab in two doses, two placebo. The overall trial was done in about 27,000 patients who were followed for a median of 2.2 years. In this trial, Marc Bonaca and investigators, they looked at the PAD subset, which were about 13% of the total cohort. Now, they specifically set out to look at how patients with PAD, during this trial and very gratifyingly, they also specifically assessed how patients with PAD did as far as limb events, not just cardiovascular events.

At the outset, not surprisingly, patients with PAD had a higher risk of cardiovascular events by, I think it was about 60% higher for the primary end point compared with patients who did not have PAD. There was really no, in fact, modification by PAD in that the benefit of Evolocumab that we saw in the overall trial was preserved among the patients with PAD as well as those without PAD. However, because patients with PAD had higher event rates, the absolute risk reductions were higher in patients with PAD.

Then, these investigators looked specifically at the incidents of major adverse limb events, which is a composite of acute limb ischemia, urgent revasc, and major amputations. What they show is that in the overall cohort, there is a 42% reduction in the risk of these major adverse limb events with Evolocumab compared with placebo. Obviously, the effect is significantly higher in patients with PAD. Although the benefit wasn't noted in the PAD subset specifically, the overall p-value for interaction was negative.

One of the really exciting things about this paper is that just like investigators have shown a monotonic reduction in cardiovascular event rates with LDL reduction, similarly, the investigators show a reduction in limb events, which is dose related and the same way in a monotonic fashion with Evolocumab. I think this is really exciting and I think this will be a very important paper for the field.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yeah. Dharam, that was beautifully summarized but once you start talking about the peripheral artery disease and this lack of interaction on effects and so on, I think of the CANVAS trial results that were reported at this meeting too. If I could maybe briefly summarize what the authors did in this circumstance, they looked at the more than 10,000 patients in the CANVAS trial who were randomized into Canagliflozin versus placebo in diabetic patients but this time they looked at whether or not there was a difference in effect with the primary prevention cohort versus the secondary prevention.

Primary prevention meaning those adults who had diabetes and risk factors but no established cardiovascular disease and the secondary prevention were those with peripheral artery disease, for example, and other established cardiovascular disease. The same thing, a lack of interaction, which I think is really important because it was the same sort of idea that the overall risk of cardiovascular events was lower in the primary prevention group. Looking at them as a subgroup alone, you didn't get the p-value that crossed the limit because the power was less in a lower risk group, but the lack of statistical interaction really gives us additional information, I think, that Canagliflozin and maybe the SGLT2s in general may be effective for primary prevention in diabetic patients. What do you think?

Dr. Dharam Kumbhani: Yeah. I mean, I think certainly, very interesting findings along those lines. As you pointed out, the event rates are much lower in the primary prevention cohort. All the confidence intervals overlap one, but because all the p-values for interaction for the three-point maze, the four-point maze, et cetera, one would say that there really isn't a difference between the primary and the secondary prevention subgroups. You would potentially have the same benefit in that subgroup as well.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Fortunately or unfortunately, in that same study, they looked at the risk of amputations and there was a lack of interaction too for that meaning there was a higher risk of amputations with Canagliflozin versus placebo. That of course is a really hot topic now, isn't it? I just wanted to point out though, when you look at it in the primary prevention group, there are only 33 events. What do you think? It spells caution but further look needs to be done? Yeah. Contrast that with the EMPA-REG outcome PAD analysis. You want to tell us about it?

Dr. Dharam Kumbhani: Yeah. Once the Canagliflozin CANVAS findings came out showing a high rate of amputations with Canagliflozin, the Empagliflozin, the EMPA-REG outcome’s investigators went back and looked at the PAD subset in EMPA-REG outcomes. This was about 20% of the total cohort. I will say that unlike FOURIER, which we just discussed, the ascertainment of amputations was not prospectively defined for this trial and it was really obtained from the CRF forms.

However, having said that, it did not appear that amputation rates were higher with Empagliflozin. They did not break it down by the different doses but one assumes that the benefit is consistent between the two doses that they study. One would imagine the PAD patients would have a higher rate overall, which it was, but even in that group, it was about 6% over three years and there was really no difference between the patients who received Empagliflozin versus those who got placebo.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: That EMPA-REG outcome paper, I mean, interestingly, it was a research letter. Joe, you've been watching this whole field unfold right now and our journal has published so many good papers, including CVD REAL, all in this space. Could you comment on that a little bit and the research letter concept and the fact that we're publishing so many of these interesting papers in this topic?

Dr. Joseph Hill: Well, Carolyn, as you inferred, this field is evolving very rapidly. Now, the interface between metabolic disease and diabetes and heart disease is blurring. Some of these diabetic drugs are really emerging as heart failure drugs, it looks like and so there's a great deal of interest in exploring that and trying to find underlying mechanisms. It's an incredibly exciting time. In parallel with that, we are publishing research letters now for papers where, again, our bar starts with validity. Our bar doesn't change but if it's a story that can be communicated with really one multi-paneled figure and an 800word text, then that is a nice bite-size piece of information that we can get out to our readership. We're publishing one or two a week now. Overall, it appears to be well received and I think it's an effective vehicle for conveying certain types of our content.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Frankly, it's such a delight to read, isn't it? It's hard to write. I think the shorter, the harder to write but this just goes to show how equally important they are.

Dr. Joseph Hill: Absolutely.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: That we're discussing it here. Well, let's go on to the next topic then, coronary artery disease. Regionalization of the care. I'll say that again, regionalization of the care. Would you like to comment on the two papers that are simultaneously being published? One would be the ACCELERATOR-2 trial. That's in the U.S. Then, a second from New Zealand, the ICare-ACS trial. Slightly different but-

Dr. Joseph Hill: Well, that's exactly right. Often, we know what to do but we don't do what we know we need to do in medicine. The implementation of what we already know is an area of hot research and is an area that's evolving rapidly. These two studies, ACCELERATOR-2 here in the United States, focused on regionalization of the interface between EMS systems and EDs, how to get patients identified in the hospital to their device, whether it's a stent or a balloon pump or whatever it is. The first medical contact to device was the metric and by implementing what we already know, the AHA mission lifeline principles, these investigators were able to optimize this regionalization, so there wasn't so much variability across these 12 metropolitan regions. As a consequence, the time to first medical contact to device was shortened, and there was in fact a striking, maybe even surprising, mortality benefit.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Exactly. That was striking to me too.

Dr. Joseph Hill: From the street to the lab, another paper from New Zealand that you referred to called ICare-ACS focused on doing a better job in the emergency department with serial ECGs and serial high sensitivity troponins, risk stratification algorithms and they found that, again, by developing these clinical pathways within the ED, they were able to shorten the length of stay in the ED and the length of stay in the hospital.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yeah. I thought those were amazing and then also from different parts of the world, really strong public health messages as well. Laura, you take care of these ACS patients right on there. What did you think of these papers?

Dr. Laura Mauri: No, I agree. I think that we've, in the past, focused on science and focused on clinical trials but ultimately, none of that matters if we don't deliver the healthcare to the patient. I think this is just a growing field and I'm glad that we're emphasizing it in circulation.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Absolutely. If we would now go to another area that is really increasing in prevalence throughout the world. Heart failure, and of course, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.

Dr. Joseph Hill: Your favorite topic.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Congratulations, Laura on the paper that you're presenting, that is being presented at this meeting, the REDUCE LAP trial. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Dr. Laura Mauri: Sure. Yes, as you know, it's a really challenging field, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. There aren't a lot of therapies that we have. We really don't have great medical therapy. This study actually looks at a medical device to treat patients. It really is a feasibility study, so it's a relatively small trial, just over 90 patients but it's randomized. We know in the device arena, as in all trials, how important randomization is but also blinding. This was actually a sham-controlled blinded trial really designed to look at this interatrial shunt device in patients who have an elevated wedge pressure.

The REDUCE LAP stands for reduce left atrial pressure. That was the primary endpoint, was pulmonary capillary wedge pressure. This was not only looked at the safety, which showed that the device placement was very safe, but at the same time also looked at the proof of concept that by placing the shunt device, there was actually a reduction in wedge pressure over a period of exercise. It needs to be followed on. It's certainly just the first phase of trials but a pretty good standard with the sham control.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yeah, well, congratulations again. I mean, this follows … There was a previous publication of the single arm trial and now, this is the first randomized sham-controlled, and the results are consistent. It's a very difficult trial to carry out. HFpEF patients are notoriously difficult to recruit. Could you tell us a little bit about what it was like successfully completing this trial?

Dr. Laura Mauri: Yeah. Well, we had very enthusiastic centers and principal investigators, Ted Feldman and Sanjiv Shah. I think what it really required in this early phase was sites that were committed to characterizing the exercise physiology. The next stage of rolling this out to a broader number of sites and a larger number of patients to see if there's a clinical effect will really be more focused on the clinical endpoints and quality of life because ultimately that's the goal, is to improve symptoms in these patients.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: What I love about the design and the whole concept, it's so simple and elegant. We almost sometimes forget that HFpEF is heart failure, which means that by definition, there's raised filling pressures. It's hemodynamic at the end and this is just a simple concept of offloading the left atrium. That's so beautiful but it does come with some questions. Every time you mention this to someone, they go, “What about, I don't know, Eisenmenger's syndrome developing later?” The right side, volume overload, pulmonary hypertension, what about atrial fibrillation down the line? How about the safety parts of it?

Dr. Laura Mauri: Right, so the procedural safety was excellent but then I think you raise really important questions and these patients are still in follow-up but looking at the report here at this meeting, there was no pulmonary hypertension in excess in the shunt treated arm. The patient selection was towards patients who had higher wedge compared with right atrial pressure and among those patients, there was no evidence of RV overload. At least at this stage things look good to go on to the next step.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: That's wonderful and exciting. We definitely need a therapy for HFpEF. Joe, would you like to highlight any other trial? We have 11. We've discussed six.

Dr. Joseph Hill: Tonight at the editorial board meeting, we will be saluting these two young investigators who are presenting their work in this competition and simultaneously publishing their work. We've invited these young investigators and their mentor and they will present a short talk to the editorial board dinner. It's an effort to salute and recognize these early career investigators, to congratulate them on outstanding work. We're pleased and privileged to publish it, so I'm particularly excited about that.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow, Joe. That is great. Thank you. I didn't know that was happening either. That's fabulous. Dharam or Laura, any other highlights that you may want to mention in this meeting?

Dr. Laura Mauri: I think that it's just been a wonderful kickoff to the meeting. We've covered, I think, many of the really important trials so it's really exciting to be able to see the work in print.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: That’s great, and to discuss it as well.

Dr. Dharam Kumbhani: Yeah, I agree. This is really exciting and hopefully, we can keep growing from strength to strength every year.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yep. You heard it right here everyone. We are going to grow from strength to strength under your leadership and with this great team, so thank you very much for joining us today.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. This week's feature paper takes a deep dive into nitric oxide signaling, that extremely important pathway in cardiovascular health and disease. This time, taking a novel look at genetic predisposition, phenotypic consequences, and therapeutic implications. All that coming right up after these summaries.

The first original paper describes the derivation and validation of a novel model to stratify the risk of death due to circulatory etiology in patients resuscitated from cardiac arrest without an ST elevation MI.

First author, Dr. Bascom, corresponding author Dr. Setter from Maine Medical Center in Portland and their colleagues use the International Cardiac Arrest Registry to derive a novel model termed the CREST Model, which describes an incrementally high risk of circulatory etiology death with an increasing score.

Now, CREST is a simple score with components of C for prior coronary artery disease. R for non-shockable rhythm. E for ejection fraction less than 30% on admission. S for shock at the time of admission. T for ischemic time more than 25 minutes. The authors showed that this CREST tool may allow for estimation of circulatory risk and improve triage of cardiac arrest survivors without STEMI at the point of care.

The next study reports associations between usual sodium, potassium and blood pressure using gold standard 24-hour urinary data collected for the first time among a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States.

First and corresponding author Dr. Jackson from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used cross-sectional data from 766 participants aged 20 to 69 years with complete blood pressure and 24-hour urine collections in the 2014 national health and nutrition examination survey.

They found that there was a strong direct relationship between higher sodium excretion and higher blood pressure and hypertension. In addition, there was an inverse relationship between potassium excretion and blood pressure and hypertension. When added to the evidence based from longitudinal and interventional studies, these results support clinicians dietary advise to lower sodium intake and increase consumption of potassium containing foods.

The next two studies in this week's journal examine the utility of circulating biomarkers to aid in the diagnosis of acute aortic dissection. As a reminder, the AHA/ACC guidelines published in 2010, proposed using the aortic dissection detection risk score or ADD risk score as a primary screening tool based on scoring the presence of three categorical risks.

Number one, high risk conditions such as Marfan Syndrome, a family history of aortic disease, known aortic valve disease, known thoracic aortic aneurysm or previous aortic manipulation. Number two, The pain features such as chest, back or abdominal pain described as being of abrupt onset severe intensity or ripping, tearing. Number three, the examination features such as evidence of profusion deficit, systolic blood pressure difference, spoken neurological deficit or aortic diastolic murmur and hypertension or shock.

The presence of one or more markers within each of these categorical features is given an ADD score of one with a maximum cumulative score of three if all three categorical features are present. In the first of these two papers in this week's journal, first author Dr. Nazareen, corresponding author Dr. Morello and colleagues from Molinette Hospital in Italy performed the advised International Multi Centers Study, which prospectively assessed the diagnostic performance of standardized strategies integrating pre-test probability assessment and D-dimer in 1,850 patients from the emergency department.

They found that in patients with an ADD risk score above one and D-dimer less than 500 nanograms per milliliter, the rate of acute aortic syndromes was significant at one in 22 cases. Rule out strategies for acute aortic syndromes integrating an ADD risk score of zero or one with D-dimer less than 500 were found to miss only around 1 in 300 cases of acute aortic syndrome.

Integrating the ADD risk score with D-dimer could help to standardize diagnostic decisions on advanced imaging for suspected acute aortic syndrome balancing the risks of misdiagnosis and over testing. The authors concluded that patients at high probability of acute aortic syndrome such as with an ADD risk score above one should proceed to computer tomography and geography or other conclusive imaging irrespective of D-dimer levels. However, in those with an ADD risk score of zero or one, with a D-dimer of less than 500 were possible rule out diagnostic strategies for acute aortic syndrome.

The second manuscript in the present issue suggests that soluble ST2 might be an even better biomarker than D-dimer to rule out aortic dissection. In this paper by first author, Dr. Wang, co-corresponding authors, Dr. Du and Guo from Beijing Anzhen Hospital and Peking University respectively, the authors measured plasma concentrations of soluble ST2 using the R&D Systems assay in 1,360 patients including 1,027 participants in the retrospective discovery set and 330 patients with an initial suspicion of acute aortic dissection and ruled in a prospective validation cohort.

The proportion of acute aortic dissection, this acute chest pain cohort was high at more than 40%. The authors found that soluble ST2 measured using this research grade assay showed higher levels in acute aortic dissection than in acute myocardial infarction or in acute pulmonary embolism. The result suggested that soluble ST2 levels could be useful as a rule out marker possibly even to an extent moderately superior to D-dimer.

A cut-off level of around 35 nanograms per milliliters using the research grade soluble ST2 assay appeared to reliably rule out acute aortic dissection if used within 24 hours after symptom onset with a negative likelihood ratio of 0.01 and a negative predictive value of more than 99%. These intriguing findings are discussed in an accompanying editorial by Dr. Toru Suzuki from University of Leicester and Dr. Kim Eagle from University of Michigan. Well, that wraps it up for our summaries. Now, for our future discussion.

Nitric oxide signaling plays a key role in the regulation of vascular tone and platelet activation. In fact, the pharmacologic stimulation of nitric oxide pathway is emerging as a therapeutic strategy in cardiovascular medicine in many areas including in heart failure preserved dejection fraction.

Today's paper is therefore all the more intriguing because it seeks to understand the impact of a genetic predisposition to enhanced nitric oxide signaling on the risk for cardiovascular disease as a way of informing of the potential utility of pharmacologic stimulation of the nitric oxide pathway.

Intrigued? Well, I certainly and I'm so glad to have with us the corresponding author, Dr. Sekar Kathiresan from Massachusetts General Hospital as well as a familiar voice, Dr. Peipei Ping, associate editor from UCLA here to discuss this paper.

Sekar, could I ask you as an introduction to tell us a little bit more of the general approach of looking at genetic predisposition as a way of perhaps forecasting potential utility of pharmacologic stimulation? Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Dr. Sekar Kathiresan: Yes. I'm delighted to speak a little bit more about this idea of using naturally occurring genetic variation to understand if a medicine developed against a target is going to work in terms of efficacy and also potentially lead to on target side effect.

As you know, there are lots of variants for mutations in genes that eventually become targets for medicines. Over the last 10, 15 years, there's been an explosion in our understanding of human genetic variation, specifically in genes targeted by medicines.

The idea here is that if there's a naturally occurring mutation in that target gene, you can simply ask what are the phenotypic consequences of carrying that mutation. Also use that information to predict, as I said, the efficacy of pharmacologic manipulation and potentially on-target side effects. This approach has become a very powerful approach.

A famous recent example of gene, PCSK9, where mutation in this gene occur naturally. A lower function of PCSK9 and individuals who carry this mutations have lower LDL levels and lower risk of heart attack. This information has led to the development of medicine that mimic those mutations and those medicines have been proven now to lower LDL as well as lower risk of heart attack, a phenomenon anticipated by the genetics.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: If I understand it right then, with regards to today's paper, the idea is that if a genetic predisposition to enhanced nitric oxide signaling associates with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, then that would support the hypothesis that pharmacologic stimulation of the nitric oxide pathway would prevent or treat the cardiovascular disease, right? Could you further expand? Because you also did a meditation analysis. How would we understand that?

Dr. Sekar Kathiresan: Let me walk you through the basics of this paper. Our hypothesis initially was a genetic predisposition to enhance nitric oxide signaling would actually affect a range of cardiovascular diseases. Nitric oxide is a well-known molecule, a regulator of a number of important processes; vascular tone, blood pressure, platelet aggregation.

A couple of important genes in the nitric oxide pathway are, one, nitric oxide synthase, the key enzyme that generates NO. Second is a soluble guanylyl cyclase that is a regulatory molecule involved in NO biology. One of the genes that is part of that pathway is called GUCY183, which is basically a subunit of the soluble guanylyl cyclase.

What we did was we looked at those two genes and asked, "Are there naturally occurring variations in those two genes that actually give us a sense that they gain function that they actually activate nitric oxide signaling. It turned out there are two polymorphisms. One in nitric oxide synthase and the other is in the soluble guanylyl cyclase subunit that are essentially gain of function. They're common polymorphisms.

We know their gain of function because the carriers of these DNA variants have lower blood pressure. An indicator that there's enhanced NO signaling. We use these two polymorphisms as an instrument to understand the phenotypic consequences of having lifelong enhanced nitric oxide signaling.

What we looked at was the relationship of individuals who carried both of the gene variants or gained a function and asked whether these individuals what the relationship of carrying the variant was to a range of cardiovascular diseases as well as a range of quantitative traits like blood pressure or kidney function.

We looked at this in extremely large human population samples where genotype and phenotype had been collated. Most important of these samples is a recent study of a population-based cohort study called the UK Biobank, which has involved about a half million people where genotype and have phenotype have been assembled.

What we found was that genetic predisposition to enhance nitric oxide signaling was associated with reduced risk of several important cardiovascular diseases. First, coronary heart disease. Second, peripheral arterial disease, and third, ischemic stroke.

That provide a very compelling evidence that atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease would be lower based on enhanced nitric oxide signaling. What was surprising to us is we also found a couple of other diseases where it seemed to benefit from enhanced nitric oxide signaling namely kidney function and pulmonary function. These were a little surprising to us, but I think it really suggest that NO plays an important role in a range of diseases.

In terms of your question about what aspect of NO biology is leading to be relationship to these diseases, is it simply the blood pressure effect for example or could you actually infer a mechanisms beyond the blood pressure? We looked at that specifically in the context of cardiovascular disease and we're able to show that the protection afforded by the enhanced nitric oxide signaling gene variants, that protection exceeded the amount predicted by the blood pressure change. In fact, by quite a bit suggesting that there are probably non-blood pressure mechanisms that are at play in terms of the protection afforded by enhanced nitric oxide signaling gene variants.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Peipei, I have to invite your thoughts now. This is such an amazing paper. We had great discussions as an editor team. Tell us your thoughts.

Dr. Peipei Ping: The editorial team as well as the reviewers have been very impressed with the quality of the datasets and the value and detail, the metadata analysis together with the appropriate analytical approach. The study is done in our view in a very careful manner and the analysis was performed through the highest standards.

What we also recognized is the potential impact that this particular study may have on multiple areas of studies, in particularly with their findings, the spectrum of individuals, how they carry nitric oxide signaling trends. You could appreciate that the individual score or genetic score paired with the analysis of the genetic variance that they have done, they see from the mental idea that examine both genetic as well as phenotype of each individual is critically important for medicine to be prescribed in the next step of therapies.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Building on that thought, Sekar, could I ask you? You found some rare inactivating variance. Are these the patients then you think should be targeted for NO enhancing therapies? What's the clinical implications of your findings?

Dr. Sekar Kathiresan: I think there are two ways to think about the implications of these findings. One is there's just a simple biologic insight, the pharmacologic activation of NO signaling maybe protective beyond pulmonary hypertension. As you know, there are actually compounds in the clinic right now that are pharmacologic activators of soluble guanylate cyclase. Those medicines work in the rare condition of pulmonary hypertension.

our work suggest that those medicines are likely to work in a broader range of indications including atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and pulmonary function. At a simple level, those experiments, I think, should be looked at. Those indications should be looked at.

Whether we've identified a subset of a population that particularly will respond versus it will be a general phenomenon across a range of different individuals that have impaired nitric oxide signaling, I think time will tell. Certainly, one group to think about would be those who are indigenously deficient in nitric oxide signaling and we did find that there are small subset of patients who have inactivating mutations in these two genes and they have higher blood pressure and increased risk for cardiovascular disease.

It was a pretty rare phenomenon, so very small number of individuals would be relevant there. I'm not sure actually that you necessarily want to limit the potential benefit of NO signaling, enhanced NO signaling to just that subgroup. In fact, my prediction would be that the medicine would be relevant for a very large percentage of the population. That you do not need to limit the potential application of this therapy to just those who carry the inactivating mutations.

Dr. Peipei Ping: I agree largely of what Sekar has discussed. I would add that in situations where genetic information are available with the patients, what the study has offered is fairly clear in the patients where rare variance that inactivate the NOS3 or the guanylyl cyclase off the genes. Maybe a failure it is with a higher systolic blood pressure risk. I'm entirely supportive with the general conclusion that we have come to a time point where NOS outside signaling activation is a critical new element of therapy in cardiovascular health and disease.

Dr. Sekar Kathiresan: Thank you Peipei. Thank you Sekar for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. We are so proud to be publishing paper in circulation. So proud and happy to be chatting about this on this podcast. You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Thank you for joining us and please tune in again next week.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to "Circulation on the Run," your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor from the National Heart Center and Duke‐National University of Singapore. Our featured discussion this week focuses on the new 2017 ACC/AHA high blood pressure guidelines, and the potential impact of these guidelines on the U.S. population. A must listen, coming right up after these summaries.

The first original paper this week provides insights into how extracellular matrix remodeling contributes to in‐stent restenosis and thrombosis. First author, Dr. Suna, corresponding author, Dr. Mayr, and colleagues from King's College London, implanted bare metal and drug‐eluting stents in pig coronary arteries with an overstretch and then harvested the stented segments up to 28 days poststenting for proteomics analysis of the media and neointima.

The authors found significant differences by proteomics in the extracellular matrix of coronary arteries after stent implantation. Most notably, an upregulation of aggrecan, a major extracellular matrix component of cartilaginous tissues that confers resistance to compression. In fact, this study provided the first evidence implicating aggrecan and aggrecanases in the vascular injury response after stenting. This opens a door to consideration of aggrecanase activity as new drug targets that may alter extracellular matrix remodeling in the vasculature.

The next paper tells us that empagliflozin could address a significant unmet need in patients with chronic kidney disease. First and corresponding author, Dr. Wanner, from Wurzburg University Clinic in Germany investigated the effects of empagliflozin on clinical outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease in the EMPA‐REG OUTCOME trial, where patients with type 2 diabetes, established cardiovascular disease, and an eGFR above 30 at screening were randomized to receive empagliflozin or placebo, in addition to standard of care.

In the current study, prevalent kidney disease was defined as an eGFR of less than 60 or urine albumin/creatinine ratio of more than 300 at baseline. In these patients, empagliflozin reduced the risk of cardiovascular death by 29% compared with placebo, reduced the risk of all‐cause mortality by 24%, and reduced the risk of hospitalization for heart failure by 39%, and the risk of allcause hospitalization by 19%.

The effects of empagliflozin on these outcomes were independent of renal function or albuminuria status at baseline. Furthermore, the adverse event profile of empagliflozin was similar across subgroups by renal function at baseline. Adverse events of particular concern in this population, such as urinary tract infection, acute renal failure, hypokalemia or fractures, lower limb amputations or hypoglycemia were not increased with empagliflozin compared to placebo.

The next study provides mechanistic insights into exercise intolerance in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction or HFpEF. First author, Dr. Houstis, corresponding author, Dr. Lewis and colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital, investigated the mechanism of exercise intolerance in 79 patients with HFpEF and 55 controls referred for cardiopulmonary exercise testing who were also studied with invasive monitoring to measure hemodynamics, blood gases and gas exchange during exercise.

These measurements were used to quantify six steps of oxygen transport and utilization in each HFpEF patients, identifying the defective steps that impaired each one's exercise capacity. The authors then quantified the functional significance of each pathway defect by calculating the improvement in exercise capacity that a patient could expect from correcting the defect.

The authors found that the vast majority of HFpEF patients harbored defects at multiple steps of the pathway, the identity and magnitude of which varied widely. Two of these steps, namely, cardiac output and skeletal muscle oxygen diffusion were impaired relative to controls by an average of 27% and 36% respectively. Due to interactions between a given patient's defects, the predicted benefit of correcting any single defect was often minor. At the individual level, the impact of any given pathway defect on a patient's exercise capacity was strongly influenced by comorbid defects.

The authors concluded that a personalized pathway analysis could identify patients most likely to benefit from treating a specific defect. However, the system properties of oxygen transport favor treating multiple defects at once, such as, with exercise training.

What are the potential benefits or risks of intensive systolic blood pressure lowering in individuals with a low diastolic blood pressure? Well, the final paper today tells us. In this study by first and corresponding author, Dr. Beddhu, and colleagues from Salt Lake City in Utah, a post hoc analysis of the SPRINT trial was performed. Remember that the SPRINT trial was a randomized control trial that compared the effects of intensive versus standard systolic blood pressure control in older adults with high blood pressure at increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The current post hoc analysis examined whether the effects of the systolic blood pressure intervention differed by baseline diastolic blood pressure.

The authors found that there were U‐shaped relationships of baseline diastolic blood pressure with the primary cardiovascular disease outcome and all‐cause death. However, the beneficial effects of intensive systolic blood pressure lowering on the primary cardiovascular disease outcome in all‐cause death were not modified by baseline level of diastolic blood pressure.

Increased risk of kidney events and serious adverse effects of the intervention were consistent across baseline diastolic blood pressure quintals. Therefore, there was no evidence that the benefit of intensive systolic blood pressure lowering differed by baseline diastolic blood pressure levels.

These findings suggest that the reason for the observed associations of worse outcomes with lower diastolic blood pressure was due to underlying processes, such as increased arterial stiffness that lead to a decline in diastolic blood pressure, rather than the level of diastolic blood pressure per se. Furthermore, lower levels of diastolic blood pressure within the ranges examined in SPRINT, should not be an impediment to intensive treatment of hypertension, at least in those without diabetes or stroke.

Well, that wraps it up for our summaries. Now for our feature discussion. The ACC/AHA guidelines for the management of hypertension in adults has really been a hot topic. Just published this year, and it really updates the seventh JNC report, which was published in 2003. Well, today's feature paper deals directly with a comparison of these two guidelines and how it may impact our practice.

I'm so pleased to have with us today the first and corresponding author of this paper, Dr. Paul Muntner, from University of Alabama at Birmingham and a very familiar wonderful voice, Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin, associate editor from UT Southwestern. Welcome!

Dr. Paul Muntner: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: Hi, Carolyn.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Paul, could I ask for you to start by painting the differences between the 2017 ACC/AHA guidelines and the JNC 7? We understand you were part of writing the guidelines, so who better than to draw our attention to the main differences.

Dr. Paul Muntner: I think that the new guideline, the ACC/AHA guideline, it was fairly comprehensive included 15 chapters, so there's a lot of new information in the guideline, everything from a dedicated section on the measurement of blood pressure to aspects of patient care.

The manuscripts featured in "Circulation" in this issue is focused on, in the past, there's different blood pressure thresholds in the guideline for defining hypertension, as well as recommendations for antihypertensive medication treatments, as well as blood pressure goals.

As everyone probably knows form JNC 7, hypertension was defined as a systolic blood pressure greater than or equal to 140 mmHg and/or a diastolic blood pressure greater than or equal to 90 mmHg, versus in the 2017 ACC/AHA guideline, these were lowered to 130/80.

In terms of treatment recommendations, there's really a fundamental shift with the new guideline, where the new guideline focuses not just on blood pressure levels, but also on overall cardiovascular disease risk. So going to the new guideline, people are recommended treatment if their blood pressure is above 140/90 but also there's a group with a blood pressure in the 130 to 139 range for systolic blood pressure, of 80 to 89 mmHg for diastolic blood pressure, who are recommended treatment if they have a high cardiovascular disease risk.

Finally, I'll just finish with this last note is that blood pressure control for people taking antihypertensive medication is now 130/80 so a goal blood pressure for people taking antihypertensive medication is systolic blood pressure less than 130 mmHg, and a diastolic blood pressure less than 80 mmHg.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: That was beautifully explained. Paul, I just really loved table 1 of your paper, and I want to refer our audience to it. It so nicely summarizes the differences between the 2017 guidelines and JNC 7. At risk of oversimplifying, when you compare the two in this approach, it's sort of comparing using a cardiovascular risk in conjunction with blood pressure‐type approach with a blood pressureonly number approach, isn't it?

Dr. Paul Muntner: Right. I think that's a key important piece of the new guideline and really CVD risk is used in conjunction with blood pressure levels to guide the recommendation to initiate antihypertensive medication. This decision was based on a wide variety of data from randomized trials, observational studies, as well as simulation or economic analyses that consistently showed the benefits of considering an individual's overall cardiovascular disease risk and providing effective and efficient treatment for lowering blood pressure.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Right. And you analyzed the impact of this in the NHANES data in today's paper. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

Dr. Paul Muntner: The U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, provides an opportunity to generate national representative point estimates on the prevalence of hypertension and treatment recommendations. So we're able to use data on about 9500 U.S. adults. Each person came in for a clinic examination where they had their blood pressure measured three times, and they were asked about their use of antihypertensive medication. What we found was the prevalence of hypertension, or the percentage of U.S. adults with hypertension according to the new guideline, is about 46%, which compares to 32% according to the JNC 7 guideline, so really a big increase in the prevalence of hypertension of about 14%. However, by using the combination of risk and blood pressure, we're not recommending treatment for everyone with hypertension but rather people with hypertension with very high blood pressure as well as those at high cardiovascular disease risk.

So antihypertensive treatment, pharmacological antihypertensive treatment, is now being recommended for about 36% of U.S. adults compared to 34% of U.S. adults according to JNC 7. The rest of the people with hypertension are recommended nonpharmacological therapies; exercise, diet, alcohol reduction, weight loss for people who are overweight and obese.

Really, it's an opportunity to treat people with pharmacological therapy if they're high risk. Then for people who aren't high risk, there's an opportunity for nonpharmacological therapies, so they can, hopefully, prevent the need for further treatment.

Overall, this equates to about 103 million U.S. adults with hypertension, so it's a very large number. However, only about 82 million of these individuals are recommended pharmacological antihypertensive treatment, so there's a big portion of the U.S. population who have hypertension, have high blood pressure, yet we think would benefit from nonpharmacological therapy.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wanpen, could I get you to chime in on what you think of the clinical implications of today's paper?

Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: I think that this paper gives us at least reassurance that although we have 30 million more people with hypertension now, not all of them have to be started on medication right away. But it also put an emphasis on cardiovascular risk assessment, which we as the cardiologist are already doing this on a regular basis. It is a major step forward to incorporate cardiovascular risks as another way to gauge how people should be treated intensively, which we like that aspect of it.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: I agree. I think it's reassuring because most people think, "Oh, my goodness. We have got so much more hypertensives to manage." But then it tells us that a restratified approach really keeps it manageable, I suppose. But Wanpen, did you have some specific concerns or questions?

Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: We look at the people who by JNC 7 calls prehypertension, which it's now some of them turn out to be a stage 1 hypertension. The question I have for Paul is that even though guidelines call for nonpharmacologic treatment first, the guidelines said give a try from three to six months, but what happens after that if they're still not reaching the goal?

Would people on the guidelines propose drug treatment eventually because, as you know, nonpharmacology treatment is easier said than done. Even though you might be able to tackle some aspect of it, but I doubt you can tackle everything; exercise, diet, sodium, weight loss all at the same time in a three to six month period.

Dr. Paul Muntner: It's a great question and it's something that the guidelines really spent a lot of time considering and reviewing the evidence. First, what the recommendation is that we recommend nonpharmacological intervention as you mentioned and the re‐evaluation. If the person's blood pressure remains in the stage 1 hypertension range and they're not a high cardiovascular disease risk, then they are recommended to continue attempts at the nonpharmacological interventions.

I've been asked several times since the guideline has been published, "What, are we supposed to just wait until people become high risk?" And my viewpoint on this is, it's hard enough to get people to adhere to their medications currently, let's be judicious about this, focus on the high‐risk people, and maybe if we can communicate with people that have high‐risk for cardiovascular disease, we can work with patients to improve medication adherence and really focus on the low‐risk people in preventing the need for lifelong therapy.

Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: That's great, I think that's really helpful in clarifying this point. Because even if you say that 30 million doesn't need to be started on the drug right away, that eventually have to be started on drug in six months, I think that doesn't really give us a reassurance but, obviously, we still have to continue to

work on these patients who are on the fence of needing pharmacology intervention.

Dr. Paul Muntner: Right. I think what's interesting here is a lot of people since the guideline has been published have said to me, "Now this is done." I said, "No. Now we're really just starting. Now is the most important part of the guideline, which is implementation." And how are we going to implement the guideline, which, as we were just discussing, isn't just about initiating pharmacological therapy, but it's also about the nonpharmacological therapies as well as medication adherence and all these other issues that are in the guideline, proper measurement of blood pressure, etc.

I think that now is going to be the most important time to really have a big impact on our patients' lives by really using the evidence and now that it's in the guideline, we're using the evidence to direct treatment appropriately.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Indeed, Paul. Just one thing. Along the lines of implementation, how about the issue of the lower target BP, to treat to? What did your study from NHANES show about that, numbers reaching targets, and do you see that as an issue?

Dr. Paul Muntner: It's an interesting question because the findings from our study found that it's currently over half of U.S. adults according to the new guideline, over half of U.S. adults on antihypertensive medication, have blood pressure above the goal in the new guideline. So in our study, 53% of U.S. adults taking antihypertensive medication had a blood pressure above 130/80. This represents an increase from the JNC 7 guideline of people with blood pressure above 140/90, of course, of about 14.4%. According to our estimates, there are about 8 million U.S. adults who are going to be recommended more intensive antihypertensive medication.

The blood pressure of less than 130/80 is a uniform goal for all people taking antihypertensive medication. This comes from several meta‐analyses that have consistently shown the cardiovascular and mortality risk reduction associated with achieving a blood pressure of less than 130/80. I think there's very firm evidence to stand on.

One interesting thing from the guidelines, it's in one of the tables, and I think it's a very important point to make, is that a lot of people who have above goal blood pressure, according to the new guideline, they're only taking one or two classes of antihypertensive medication. The vast majority of them are not taking multiple classes of antihypertensive medication, so we feel that these therapies can be optimized and we're not going to be pushing people into antihypertensive polypharmacy but rather they can receive substantial risk reductions without really giving them too many additional pills.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. Really about implementation. Wanpen, did you have any other comments before we close?

Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: Yes, I think that is really interesting to see also with these guidelines how is this going to be embraced to the rest of the world. Actually, prior to this guideline, at least hypertension control rate in the U.S. is better than most countries, European countries, as well as in Asia. But now even lowering the bar, we use the same criteria for the rest of the world, that would be a lot worse control rate than now. I think it will be challenging, not only in this country but throughout the world.

Dr. Paul Muntner: That's a great point. Obviously, these guidelines are U.S. guidelines, however, new European guidelines should be coming out in 2018, is what I've heard. I think that even though these guidelines were developed by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, the data that we're using really comes from worldwide evidence. The evidence didn't stop at the borders. A lot of the evidence that was used in choosing the blood pressure levels to define hypertension, the blood pressure levels to recommend pharmacological interventions, as well as the blood pressure goals do come from other countries. A lot of data from Asia, Europe, Australia, so I think that the data used in these guidelines should be generalized when it's out of the United States.

I think there may be challenges with implementing these guidelines in different settings, and, obviously, a lot of things will have to be tailored to where they will be implemented. However, the overall goal is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease and renal disease related to hypertension and, hopefully, that can be a worldwide goal.

Dr. Carolyn Lam: What a great reminder. It is worldwide data, worldwide evidence for a worldwide problem. Well, listeners, you heard it right here on "Circulation on the Run." Thank you so much for joining us today and don't forget to tune in again next week.

Dr Carolyn Lam: (Music playing)...Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the Journal and his editors I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Today is one of my favorite podcasts as always because it is the fellows in training podcast.

This is where the center stage and we’re so pleased to have two brilliant fellows with us today. Dr. Tom Ford from University of Glasgow and Dr. Kevin Shah from UCLA and of course joining us today as well is our editor for digital strategies, Dr. Amit Khera. Hi everyone.

Dr Kevin Shah: Hi Carolyn.

Dr Carolyn Lam: Hey Kevin. Since you're there in wonderful bright and sunny California and going to talk about one of my favorite topics HFpEF. Could you please tell yourself and then please tell us also about the paper you chose?

Dr Kevin Shah: I am a third-year general cardiology fellow at UCLA. I have a career interest in advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. I'm going to be doing a one-year fellowship in that next year at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles.

The article that I picked to discuss was the Reduced LAP Heart Failure I Trial and it was specifically testing a novel device in a small cohort of patients to see if the creation of intraatrial septal connection in patients with HFpEF can improve their filling pressures as well as their symptoms with exercise.

Dr Carolyn Lam: Yeah so Kevin what about this paper stood out to you?

Dr Kevin Shah: The two biggest things that were impressive to me and that really stood out were 1) this concept that keeps coming up more frequently in contemporary research, which is the idea of using a sham trial. Specifically, in this study they did perform a one-to-one randomized trial. With one of the arms, if they did not receive the actual device, they underwent a complete sham undertaking including headphones in music and blind folding the patient who were not sure if they received the device or not.

I think it's an important concept because it does speak to the placebo aspect of procedures. It tries to really control for that when a patient doesn't know if they received a novel device, and we can still test them and see how they feel after-the-fact. I think that's an important strategy in modern trials.

Dr Carolyn Lam: Kevin, that is such a good point and really quite novel too. So we've discussed this paper before but not quite the aspect that you point out and I couldn't agree more. The REDUCED LAP follows its pilot study results, which was open label single arm right published in the Lancet. So this is a very reassuring results since knowledge sham controlled.

I suppose the lesson comes from other device trials that were sham controlled and then gave maybe slightly different results), right when we're talking about the renal innervation trials before. But you said that there were two points that stood out to you so what was the second?

Dr Kevin Shah: The other will also be endpoints and what they chose to target. It was a small trial but I think it's important in a disease state such as HFpEF to select specific endpoint that really reflect the physiology and pathophysiology and the authors should be commended. I think for selecting primary and secondary endpoint that will primarily focus on hemodynamics as well as symptomatic relief.

I know that they are working toward their stage 3 trial and I think in the vein selection of these type of endpoint. Probably more so than endpoints such as mortality are going to favor this disease state in terms of trying to carve out some sort of therapy that actually make patients feel better.

Dr Carolyn Lam: Great great points. For me to just knowing that a hemodynamic endpoint makes sense, because if we look at the Champion Trial and look at the HFpEF subgroup of the champion trial it also seems to show that if people just treated patients with HFpEF according to a hemodynamic guide and in the champion trial that was the pulmonary artery pressure reading. That actually appeared to keep patients out of hospital. And I have to agree with you that sometimes we forget that has HFpEF is about pulmonary congestion and that the end of the day it is a hemodynamic disease. It is heart failure in other words.

Kevin one last thing what do you think about using this sort of strategy in HFREF?

Dr Kevin Shah: That's a good question I can't say I know at least this device has been studied in this trial like you mentioned in one prior trial that was not randomized. I'm sure it's been at least investigated. I can't say I've seen any literature on it. I like to think that it would make some sense from a physiological standpoint, but I don't know if anyone is actually gone to the task of seeing how the device performs in HFREF.

Dr Carolyn Lam: As I said I think at the end of the day I think they're all part of the same heart failure family. And left atrial hyper tension is kind of the final common pathway. So I agree with you that maybe it's worth considering in HFREF too, but then on the other hand of course and have friends HFREF you've got all this great medical therapy. Well Kevin I really, really appreciate your selection. May I now switch over to Tom? Tom would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself ,and which paper you chose.

Dr Tom Ford: Sure thing my name is Tom Ford. I'm very interested in interventional cardiology, and my career path has been a bit unusual because I did my basic cardiology training in Sydney. And then from there I got a great opportunity to pursue a research degree, a PhD, which I’m currently halfway through. That's what Prof. Colin Berry and Prof. Keith Oldroyd here in Glasgow and that’s a British Heart Foundation Fellowship so it's a great opportunity. I went out for recent WOSCOPS Trial from posthoc analysis. In this is a really interesting study a lot of the readers and listeners will be familiar with the original publication. It was actually published 22 years ago. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The WOSCOPS was a landmark trial that looked at statins for primary prevention. And this is the present analysis that looked at just over 2500 Mills with LDL-cholesterol above hundred and 190 mg/dL. So for those of you listeners in the UK 4.5 mmol per liter so quite the high LDL. They looked at these gentlemen without pre-existing vascular disease. There's guideline recommendation for this group but not much evidence. And what they showed was over a five-year period of follow-up that there was a reduction in cardiovascular death and all cause mortality with this treatment. That wasn't just for the period of the trial because of the study design we were able to get a legacy effect which was noted over 20 years of follow-up. So in summary a trial will show the benefits of statins and primary prevention mortality benefit for people without very high LDL to start with.

Dr Carolyn Lam: Carolyn awesome Tom. I love that she began saying that your into interventional cardiology but you chose an article about medical therapy and the importance of it, the statins. I fully agree with you. Amit did you have some for Tom?

Dr Amit Khera: Sure. First I want to commend you both I don't think you did this on purpose but Carolyn's heart failure HFpEF expert. I'm sure she loved the other trial and I'm a preventative cardiologists. So we certainly love you choices this week. Tom, thanks for the summary. It's an important article and one that we did highlight on the previous podcasts. You know there's so many things to talk about but certainly remind you that we have great data sets around that can answer unique questions that maybe are unanswerable today and I think this is an example of that.

Can you speak to this ideal of pulling an old 22-year-old child as you mentioned and how that provides insights and kind of as a PhD student ways to think about ways to be creative and research?

Dr Tom Ford: One of the reasons I chose this child because it's close to my heart looking at a population in the west of Scotland. Sadly over here we've got too high prevalence of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. So what this trial speaks to is the benefits of a really carefully planned procedure. I mean these were outstanding researchers that thought ahead of their time, and as a result of their analysis. Over two decades later they are still multiple publications and there's kind of open approach where there's different research groups that have used this data set for number of different outputs.

I think a real outstanding example of what can be done with well-planned study.

Dr Amit Khera: Sounds like were in agreement about how to use a fruitful database and continue to learn from it as time goes on. The thing about this as you pointed out is the LDL above 190 component and what the authors say this is sort of the first clinical trial evidence for treatment. In your view, does this change practices or guidelines? Was this already what we were doing? Does this support what we were already doing, or how does this impact clinical care and guidelines currently?

Dr Tom Ford: I think it's a good point. People will say we were doing this anyways. I think now it's going to be helpful and practical inside the clinic. If you can say to a patient well actually look I know we’re asking you to take this tablet you've not actually had an event but, ultimately we know the natural history of people in your position may well be unfortunately that they’re high-risk, and that there is actually a mortality benefit to be had from these tablets that you don't necessarily want to take but definitely the benefit’s there.

Dr Amit Khera: The neat part as you pointed out also was dual components when they're looking at the on treatments during the trial. We see an improvement in events. What the WOSCOPS investigators have done so creatively over the years is this idea of a legacy affect.

The long-term impact in preventive cardiology – certainly a space for where were going was just looking beyond the short-term. There's obviously problems there too because that was not pre specified people were necessarily on assigned therapies. Tell me when you look at this long-term legacy effect what does that mean to you? How does that add be it the way you counsel patients or how you think about this treatment in patients with high LDL?

Dr Tom Ford: The effect of the statin assumes that all the patients are actually taking the drug. I think there has to be an analysis of these patients in this trial and obviously not everyone was compliant. So I think we can maybe extraopolate that for the that there might be in even bigger effect for those patients that were actually taking the drug. And I think if you were to take it for five year period. Obviously we don't know what happens after that. What we do know is the solid mortality data.

What it speaks to me is that if you take the drug and you are at high risk to begin with then potentially it's plaque stabilization, the pleiotrophic effects of statins that we know are beneficial and the hard endpoints are definitely reduced. That persists over 20 years of follow-up. So I think that’s really a great victory for preventive cardiology as you said.

Dr Amit Khera: That's a great point about biasing towards the know when you have people crossing over and that this may be conservative of what was seeing in the long term. I think that's a really important point. One last question for you. The West of Scotland trial - generations have changed and back then obviously part of it was trial design but LDLs on average were higher. The median or mean in the group was around 192.

If you look when they look above or below that 190. The people below were 178 or so - still pretty high LDL. So it does beg the question you know we have this paradigm of LDL above 190 should be treated regardless. You wonder if that should be 160 or whether the number should be lower. What are your thoughts about that?

Dr Tom Ford: I agree with you. I think it's always a challenge to kinda pass off dichotomous endpoints when you’ve got continuous variable like LDL. It's just a continuum of risk and divided using the figure 190 in the study. In fact the patients with LDL less than 190 they couldn't show statistically significant reductions in all cause mortality. But I think it's again personalization of meds and we may have to discuss the risk with individual patient.

Ultimately we do have to have a firm conclusion. I think in this study the data is quite clear that 190 does seem to be quite robust as the predictor who's gonna get the most benefit.

Dr Amit Khera: Listen I think protection article that you pointed out was close to home and you certainly discuss it very well and provided lots of important insights. And again I think it was an excellent choice and one that was really highlighted in the media as well. I think there was a broad allure to this article. If we make change gears now little bit we've heard about the science part know we want to talk about what it means to be a fellow in training.

I just want to say on behalf Circulation also speak for myself. It's so important for us to involve fellows in training into our activities and you're one of our major targets in terms of impact and goals for the journal. We're so delighted to do this twice a year and were always thinking about other ways we can get FITs involved. I mentioned just a couple of things the American Heart Association has of fellows in training program where people can sign up for free and get online access to the journal.

So I hope all fellows are taking part in that. We're starting a new initiative called FAVES where just like you both submitted articles of interest of the fellows can do the same. On Fridays we’ll post those on social media so these are a few ways that were getting FITS more involved and we really hope to continue that. Let me start by maybe asking Kevin to have a chat with you as much.

Kevin in terms of journals there's some me now we're getting inundated with information. I think that's a good thing. How do you consume the medical literature? There's old print journals; there's the online journal; there's a table of contents your social media tell us a little bit about how you consume the medical literature.

Dr Kevin Shah: I agree. We’re kinda getting to a space where now the amount of information that's coming out is tremendous. I think that finding a strategy to help filter out what appeals to your clinical and research interest is becoming more challenging. For me I'll say print journals are slowly kind of falling off. I don't subscribe to too many of them but they still do come to my doorstep. The main way that I would say I'm getting access to or at least becoming aware of articles that are kinda relevant to where I am in my training and what I'm doing is the social media. Some primarily at least for me is Twitter.

I'll say it's a helpful tool and that I can follow a group of individuals that have a similar professional interest as me and you can almost always rely on the fact that somebody will post an article that becomes relevant to a common interest. So between sharing on social media I think that's the primary way that I'm really catching my eyes to a major journal articles.

Aside from that I still subscribe by email to a couple larger journals and see their weekly or biweekly updates about what's being published. And the last at least in my institution our division chief Dr. Gregg Fonarow; he goes out of his way to send to the fellows and faculty new articles that are kind of pertinent to clinical practice. Which is very helpful for us.

Dr Amit Khera: That's so helpful and you know everyone has their own way of consuming the literature but I certainly appreciate your interest in social media. You know there are some luddites out there that think of it literally as just social and it really has a professional bent to it. Well rapidly you can figure out the most cutting-edge important articles in your field so I certainly appreciate your comments. Tom let me ask you now, at your stage of training. You've had an interesting training path as you said you sort of started as an interventional cardiologist and now you are doing a PhD. There so many different articles in Circulation. We have original research, state-of-the-art reviews. We have these opinion pieces and on my minds and different ones. Tell us a little bit about what articles appeal to you and which other novel formats maybe you'd be interested in seeing.

Dr Tom Ford: I think that the original research articles are great if it's in your chosen field. Obviously this is where we're going to a great deal of detail on specific topics but outside of that I think that the review articles are great form if it's something that’s a common clinical topic to kinda brush up on. Your On My Mind section I think is great because it gives you an opportunity to hear from key opinion leaders in the field. I think it was Morton Kern discussing invasive coronary physiological assessment.

So I think there’s different types of articles that can be quite helpful. To start with the original research ones. I’ll skim through the contents. I'll tend not to read the details if it's not in my chosen field.

Dr Amit Khera: Yeah great point. Obviously they are topical depending on what your main interest area and we always say reading around your field to get a broader perspective in cardiovascular medicine. I think you hit on the point about on my mind ones. We really want people be able to free associate and original article are sometimes more stiff and linear. So we really like those pieces as well. Carolyn we’ll give you second set ask a question or two to for today.

Dr Carolyn Lam: Actually Amit I just wanted to comment. Isn't it so encouraging to hear the variety of approaches and you know Circulation has enough that we’re meeting various different needs. I really wanted to take the opportunity to thank you as editor of digital strategies for just doing so many of these initiatives for Circulation. I think it’s just incredibly important for the Journal to keep up with the times in that sense. Amit, may I be cheeky ask you how do you consume the literature?

Dr Amit Khera: Carefully. You know the neat part in being on the editorial board of Circulation and one of the associate editors we get to see so many amazing papers that come through and I think obviously I get to see, essentially and also my digital strategies role I essentially see every paper that comes through that we end up publishing.

Obviously I get wide exposure to Circulation but obviously beyond that I get all the e-Table of Contents for almost every major cardiovascular Journal. Certainly looking at social media and I tend to find hotspots interventions and other areas and podcasts – let’s not forget podcasts. So there's some great podcasts out there. I know of one.

Dr Carolyn Lam: Oh I love it. All right but just one last question for both Tom and Kevin from me. I honestly would love to know what do you think we could do better or what would you like to see more from Circulation?

Dr Kevin Shah: I guess the question I have for Circulation is there any role or have fellows ever gotten involved in the review process for articles?

Dr Amit Khera: Listen that's really important because you learn a lot from doing that and obviously in institutions similar to ours where if you asked to review a paper you have a fellow contribute. I think you might be asking something sort of more formal and systematic with Circulation. I will say that one of our Circulation journals I believe it's Circ Heart Failure or Quality and Outcomes I'll check. It has a formal program where fellows essentially can be assistant editors if you will.

We have our cardiology fellows here at UT Southwestern involved in that process. And I think part of that process is just an IT issue of how to maintain confidentiality of our papers for our authors but yet still let fellows contribute meaningfully. And also timing because you know papers have cycles where you decide if he should go out for review but it'll come back and you never know when that happens you have to make the next level decision.

Then it goes potentially to a meeting and so being able to make sure that fellows can participate at every level, cause that's where the value comes in. We are certainly interested in learning from what our other Circulation of family journals is doing in that space and definitely an area that we've thought about some fellows contribute but need to do more.

Dr Carolyn Lam: And Tom how about you?

Dr Tom Ford: Just picking up on your point on what the sister journals are doing you know I see the Outcomes Journal is looking at more visual abstracts and video abstracts. You know I think it's really important that we increase the efficiency of learning. What's your take on that?

Dr Carolyn Lam: That is the greatest suggestion. I like first of all your phrase of increasing the efficiency of learning. Amit, I'm going to turf it to you again.

Dr Amit Khera: I'll tell you what's amazing you know when I started this role a bit ago. Both of you are obviously contributing to research and everyone on this call is and I think we forget that in the social media space we don't have a lot of data. Some things sound good or feel good. At Circulation my predecessor Carolyn Fox did a randomized trial called intention to tweet if you haven't read it. And there's a follow-up to that that was published. And essentially by randomizing articles to social media or not there was no increase in the views if you will of the article.

There's always limitations to every study but the point is, as you think about novel offerings, something we struggle or something we’ve seen as an opportunity, what works we tried a few things we tried certain videos and we look at what's the uptake and interestingly some things we thought that would be widely of interest really weren’t. Then other avenues we’ve tried have been.

I love what you said, and as Carolyn also felt, the idea of efficiency of learning. I think we need to do frankly in the social media and journal spaces is to continue not just to innovate but to study and figure out what works and what doesn't to help different learners.

Dr Carolyn Lam: (Music playing)....Thank you very much audience for listening today as well. You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Don't forget to tune in again next week.